You Are Your Own Medicine
"Let your heart break so your spirit doesn't." – Andrea Gibson
These are heartbreaking times. We are faced daily with accounts of disaster, senseless violence, and shocking cruelty. It's exhausting and overwhelming. Closer to home, we may experience illness, financial insecurity, the loss of a loved one – a stream of injuries both minor and major.
The writer Toni Morrison observes:
"Sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt... it is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances."
Perhaps the most fearless thing we can do is feel it all – to allow our hearts to break, to survive "in part," but with our humanity intact.
This is where myth – and the sky above – can guide our way.
In ancient Greek mythology, Chiron is the wise centaur – half-human, half-equine – who, unlike the other centaurs ruled by savage impulses, became known as a gifted healer. According to the legends of Ovid and others, Chiron was mortally wounded by a poisoned arrow to the thigh. After his death, he was placed in the sky in the constellation Centaurus, one of the 48 constellations identified in the 2nd century CE by the astronomer Ptolemy.
The legend of Chiron deeply influenced the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who described "the mythological truth" that the one who is wounded becomes "the agent of healing" – in other words, the archetypal wounded healer.
Chiron lives not only in myth and psyche, but also in the sky. The celestial body of Chiron – a hybrid rocky/icy comet-asteroid (or minor planet) – completes its circumnavigation of the Sun every 50.7 years in what Oxford Reference calls "a chaotic and eccentric orbit" between Saturn (the planet of structure and discipline) and Uranus (the planet of rebellion and revolution). Some astrologers see Chiron as the energetic mediator between the two frequencies. In its chaotic path around the Sun, Chiron also transits the twelve constellations of the zodiac.
Starting today, July 30, 2025, through January 2, 2026, Chiron begins a retrograde transit in the sign of Aries. The TL;DR for the significance of this: you are your own medicine.
Chiron retrograde invites us to identify the exile who carries the Aries wound – likely a younger part that felt it had to armor up, perform, or disappear in order to stay safe. This inner exile may still be driving us to react with defensiveness, overachievement, or invisibility. Acknowledgment is the beginning of healing.
Aries is raw, instinctual, independent, self-defining. Wounds here often center on:
– Not feeling "enough" to take up space
– Believing we must fight or prove ourselves to be worthy
– Fearing rejection for being "too much" or "too sensitive"
– Early identity wounds – feeling unseen or unsupported in our emerging selfhood, being punished for our autonomy, or shamed for the bright, unguarded fire of being ourselves
Further amplifying the personal and collective healing potential of Chiron's retrograde in Aries, the planet Venus moves into the sign of Cancer, where it remains until August 25. No matter where Aries and Cancer fall in your natal chart, the healing potential is massive.
Pay close attention to new realizations or "aha" insights tomorrow – and in the days that follow – as Mercury Cazimi the Sun shows you exactly what is ready to be healed.
